Warhammer 40K: System Error, I Summoned the Arch-Traitor!

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"This planet has fallen. We need to evacuate as many civilians as we can."

On the landing pad, engine roar tangled with the sporadic crack of bolter fire in the distance.

An evacuation transport was taking on its last batch of civilians. The Primaris Ultramarines held the boarding line, their power armor caked in ash and dried blood.

One of them stepped forward and took the child from Sharrowkyn's arms, the same child he had just pulled back from under Lucius's blade.

"Sharrowkyn. You're not evacuating with us?"

The Ultramarine turned to look at his Raven Guard cousin.

He didn't know Sharrowkyn well. Only that this warrior in black armor, like himself, had been born ten thousand years ago in another age, and had passed through a crack in time to land in this strange new era.

But after a few battles together, Sharrowkyn had carved out a reputation among the Primaris Astartes that none of them questioned.

Not through seniority. Through strength, and through the rare humility that walked alongside it.

Sharrowkyn had his head down, working through his bolt sniper rifle. Every component wiped, calibrated, seated back into place. No hurry to any of it. The kind of careful, deliberate motion that looked less like maintenance and more like a private ritual.

The magazine slid home with a soft click. Only then did he look up.

"No need." The voice beneath the Raven helm was calm and even. "But if you can, have a shuttle ready for me. I have a target to hunt."

"Wouldn't happen to be a target who's only barely better than trash, would it, cousin?"

The Ultramarine said it with half a grin.

A faint sound came from beneath the helm. Brief. Clipped. The closest thing Sharrowkyn seemed willing to offer in the direction of a laugh.

"You're not wrong. He is a little better than trash." A beat. "If the opportunity presents itself, I intend to put a round through a fallen Primarch one more time."

"Say what?"

The Ultramarine hadn't even finished processing that when Sharrowkyn ignited his jump pack. A black shape. Gone. Punched straight up into the sky.

----------

Macragge's Honour.

Clone-Fulgrim sat alone in his room.

No war. No orders. No perfection to chase. For the first time in his life, he had nothing but time, and himself to face with it.

He worked through it slowly.

He was a clone, grown by Fabius Bile, once the proudest of his sons. A perfectly replicated body. But not an empty one.

A soul fragment from a parallel world had been planted inside him. The version of himself from that world had never fallen. He had found clarity through suffering, and burned in loyalty until the very end.

And then there was Sanguinius's feather, holding steady around a heart that still hadn't fully decided what it was.

Three things, merged into one. The him that existed right now.

His identity was a tangle he hadn't worked out. Clone, or echo of a parallel self, or something new, shaped together by the sacred and by will. He couldn't have said which, precisely.

But it didn't stop the memories from coming in clearer.

the Great Crusade. Chemos. His sons, the good ones first: Saul Tarvitz, Akurduana. And then the others. The ones who had gone into Slaanesh's embrace and come out as something unrecognizable.

He couldn't blame them.

If the rafters rot from the top down, what right does the source of the rot have to judge what it touches? If the commander himself had been the origin of the corruption, condemning the contaminated was hollow.

The Phoenician held nothing back from himself. No excuses. No distance.

For perhaps the first time in his life, he genuinely reflected on how he had led the Third Legion.

The culture of worship. He had built it himself. Had been proud of it, the spiritual core of a Legion he had loved. Rank and file warriors venerated their officers as models of perfection. Officers venerated their Primarch as something close to a god. Layer after layer of adoration, each level looking up to the next, all of it flowing back to him.

When he fell, that chain didn't break. It conducted. Every link carried the current of his corruption downward, clean and unobstructed. None of them were spared.

And Ferrus.

The name landed like a weight, and the Phoenician went quiet beneath it.

Ugly Gorgon.

My beloved.

Every time he closed his eyes, the image was waiting. The Laer Blade coming down. Ferrus's head rolling across the scorched earth of Isstvan V.

That moment had been burned into him. It wasn't going anywhere.

They had been comrades chasing perfection together. They had stood at the forge and sharpened each other. Of the few people either of them had ever truly opened himself to, the other had been one.

And then the betrayal severed all of it.

Clone-Fulgrim found himself thinking of the parallel version, of himself and Ferrus in that other world.

Loyal and traitor, swapped.

There, Ferrus was the fallen one. Fulgrim the steadfast.

The roles reversed. The ending identical.

Two world-lines. Two betrayals. Neither had a version that ended well.

It left the Phoenician carrying a grief that doubled back on itself. For himself. And for the self in that other world who had also lost his brother, just from the other side.

"Throne."

He bowed his head. His long hands came up to cover his face. The words came through the gaps between his fingers, raw and splintered.

"What have I done?"

THUD. THUD. THUD.

A knock at the door cut through it. Abrupt. Ordinary.

Clone-Fulgrim lifted his face from his hands. A breath. His expression settled back into place. When he spoke, the tone was what it always was, measured, composed, elegant.

"Enter."

The door opened.

Kaelen stepped inside. Cullen was a step behind him.

A few attendants waited in the corridor, but didn't come in. With them was a tall iron cabinet.

"Lord Fulgrim, forgive the intrusion. Lord Guilliman has had a set of power armor prepared for you — fitted to your physique. Would you like to be armored now?"

"Is there to be a battle?"

The Phoenician asked it quietly.

Kaelen caught the faint shift beneath the question. He didn't answer right away. He turned it over for a moment first.

"Whether there's a battle is entirely up to you. Lord Guilliman isn't going to push you into anything. That said — given the possibility of engaging the Plague Fleet next, it would be better for you to have armor on. You are a Primarch. If an enemy macro-cannon punches through Macragge's Honour and the decompression pulls you out into space, that would be a problem."

Isn't that right, Lord Guilliman?

He added that last part strictly to himself.

Fulgrim smiled. Barely. Like the surface of still water touched by a breath of wind.

Then he shook his head.

"No, Mister Kaelen. I'm not ready to be armored just yet."

He looked up. Those clear eyes held something that came close to earnest.

"But since you're here — I'd like to ask you to stay. Could you spare a few minutes to talk with me?"

Kaelen and Cullen looked at each other. Nothing pressing on the schedule. A conversation wasn't going to hurt anyone.

"Of course, Lord Fulgrim."

➤ Next: Guilliman: Gah! Green Sprout Is Not Rome Ah!

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